1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to the field of image selection and manipulation. More particularly, the invention pertains to methods for selecting and displaying a subset of images to be displayed to enable the user to see what images or pictures are contained within an image storage system.
2. Description of Related Art
CD's, DVD's, Zip drives are often used for storage of images. One particular issue is how to enable the user to quickly and efficiently determine what is stored on a particular disk or storage device. With the capacity of these devices exceeding 100 MB it is possible to store 100's if not 1000's of images on them. Once the images are on the disk it is not possible for the user to determine what is on it except by either reading the label or inserting the disk in a computer and reading what is on it. To remedy this system it is possible to print small or “thumb nail” image of each of the pictures or images on the disk or create a label for either the disk or its case. The available printing space on a CD disk would limit the number of printed thumb nails to approximately 26 reasonable sized thumbnails and an average CD would contain up to 2000 images (depending on image size, resolution and compression ratios) thus it would be difficult to determine what images are on the disk base on printing just the first or last 26 images.
Images are also stored on hard disk drives, disk arrays or other on line storage locations, capacities of these drives range from 100 MB to well over 200 GB which would equate to 100 to 300,000 images depending on size. If customers use either a picture search program or some type of ad hoc scheme for organizing images or pictures, it is possible sort or group images by key parameters and return list or group based on the criteria entered. This method typically returns a large number of images that the user must sort through to find the desired image or images.